... and so how many studios are about to release epic ED scale games on UE5 in the next year?
If it is so easy, why isn't this happening?
The scale of ED is in the galaxy, which I ferverently hope is not being done in the engine and is being done on a database somewhere and a routine exists in the engine to pass in a system ID and get all info for that single system.
Yes, yes, it is so easy. The hard part is the graphics. ED is amazing graphically (leaving aside the odyssey UI and visual overhaul). The ships and system representation are very very good!
To break it down the engine handles the drawing of the scene, the movement of you and others within it, atmosperics, NPCs. BGS, Missions, Trading are all done outside the engine. All this is plain to see in 'other games' drawing systems etc etc
Why is no one doing it on ED's scale? Why would they? It's all been done before. Fdevs 2 main competitors are doing it, one with only one system but with more depth of gameplay, and the other with a tiny developmenty team is doing everything ED does and a whole lot more, excepy for the BGS, making fdev look like a joke. And let's be honest here, the BGS have never worked right.
And futher to those 2, many others are using U5 and Unity to build space games.
About two years ago I had a go at this just to see how it all went together in Unity. I downloaded the CSVs and within a day had them offloaded into an MSSQL DB. 2 further days had me jumping from system to system and placing 'planets' where they should be. The entire exercise showed me that I am useless at graphics, leaving aside the BGS, the rest is donkey work, ED lives off it's graphics.